Acorn Collective

Let's make crowdfunding free

We're helping fulfil crowdfunding's promise of being a democratic, accessible way for small businesses to get funding. Current platforms are equity-backed, so they focus on projects that give them the best return - with high barriers to entry and often policies that all but shut out developing countries.
We want to crowdfund crowdfunding.
Our early backers are token holders, not equity holders, so they want an expansive platform that values a community project in Kenya as much as it does a tech project in California.
The Acorn platform will be completely free to use in any country and for any legal purpose.
With crowdfunding overtaking VC's as the most popular way to get funded, and with a growing appetite for entrepreneurship in developing economies, there is a huge and proven market.
Our team includes the ex-CTO of crowdcube, the worlds largest equity crowdfunding platform, along with Ian Scarffe, Desmond Marshall and an experienced commercial team. We'll partner with successful accelerators globally to make free reward crowdfunding a reality. Please refer to the website for more the technical whitepaper.

All Legal ProjectsWe’ll allow legal and non-harmful projects, irregardless of category to crowdfund for free. Acorn works as well for community projects as it does for huge consumer products. We don't shut you out because you're a local business.

Any CountryCrowdfunding is an outstanding success in developed countries. Emerging markets are all but shut out. We’re interested in an expansive ecosystem, so we’ll allow all non-sanctioned countries.

Early IncentivesWe want to reward and encourage early adopters. A Project Incentive Fund provides generous incentives for people to use our platform. Our affiliate rewards provides commissions for successful recruitment of additional users.

Validated InterestWe have a growing list of interested projects waiting to be listed. Accelerators and incubators in developed and emerging markets are partnering with us to provide crowdfunding to ventures and entrepreneurs in their networks.

good team
good vision
whitepaper requires more specific detail on project approval process as it is very vague in terms of who the ethics and compliance approval board will be and the vetting criteria to be used.
Good luck with the project.

Agree

3 people agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 31 Jan 2018

Thanks very much for the review, Doug. We have mapped out a process for project approval but didn't include it in the whitepaper; we'll attach it as an appendix so people have more clarity on how this works - should be today I hope. Thanks for highlighting it!

Yet another crowdfunding.
The team looks solid, but the project itself doesn't create any additional value to existing solutions.
What we need is not an another global crowdfunding platform but a easy and convenient way to connect local businesses with local community and help them benefit from this bond.

Agree

2 people agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 31 Jan 2018

Hi Mike, Thanks very much for the review! The additional solutions we're trying to add are that the platform is free to use and available in many countries that struggle to access crowdfunding. You're absolutely right about the need for community projects to have access too, it really is where the heart of the project is - we want to be global but locally-available with a network of accelerators helping with support and local outreach. There's a significant part of the ICO given over to a Project Incentive Fund that gives accelerators the resources to do just that.

The ICObench contains very few ratings followed by comprehensive reviews. When assessing projects experts just give them marks without explanation or analysis. I write a review for those people who would like to understand the main idea of a project, get to know the key features, pros and cons of the White Paper, website, benchmarks and indicators of the ICO. If after reading a review you get interested in the project you can make a thorough study of it.

Crowdfunding is a form of alternative finance, a practice or method to raise a desired sum of money from a large group of people via the internet, utilizing the social media version of fundraising. This model is typically helping businesses, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs and many others to raise a large amount of money by persuading individuals ito donate to their projects, products or services. Crowdfunding campaigns are more successful today as compared to the normal investment methods and have witnessed funds flowing in billions of dollars for crucial projects. Pledgers have been seen to donate anything between $1 to $10,000 for a project cycle. More and more people are turning to crowdfunding to raise small or large funds from donors online, growing into a multi-billion-dollar charity industry. With an approximate 600 crowdfunding platforms all over the world, crowdfunding raised an estimated fund of $530 million in 2009, $1.5 billion in 2011, $2.7 billion by 2012 to $6.1 billion by the end of 2013. 2014 saw companies and individuals raise nearly $16.2 billion through crowdfunding, which was 167% more than what was raised in 2013. The crowdfunding statistics for 2017 reports a global amount of $34 billion raised. The projection of the crowdfunding industry is expected to grow over $300 billion by 2025. It is really a whole new world of investment. With online crowdfunding platforms, entrepreneurs and small businesses can seek funding for various inventions and projects from unaccredited investors. This new fundraising model helps startups and entrepreneurs find the capital they need to launch a business. Moreover the crowd is actually a great option for people to raise money from. That is because when you convert the crowd into investors, they will automatically be your marketers, your evangelists, and will really do good work in terms of getting the word out on your company. Today, major crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter are widely popular, but they don’t operate worldwide. Acorn Collective promises to change the face of crowdfunding using blockchain technology. The Acorn Collective is seeking to raise up to $50 million (the pre-sale funding target is $5 million that allows to create an MVP) to develop a new platform which will make crowdfunding globally accessible and free to all legal start-up projects, irrespective of their geographical location. By funding through an ICO and utilising the Ethereum blockchain, the Acorn Collective will eliminate the traditional 3-5% transaction fees and 5% platforms fees normally associated with other crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo or digital currency based platforms such as KickICO and FundYourselfNow. Acorn will also contribute to projects by providing a selection of fee-based services. Those services include all of the following - legal assistance, marketing, sourcing and manufacturing, technical help including the development of web, mobile, and blockchain applications, accounting and taxes, translations. During the ICO, a fixed number of Acorn tokens, OAK (ERC-20 standard token), will be made available, which can then be used for all transactions on its crowdfunding platform or for exchange of additional value-added services such as the post-campaign marketplace, marketing support or point-of-sales payment application. The OAK token allows for cheap and fast transactions within the Acorn Collective ecosystem, including all transactions between backers, companies and consumers through a single token. There is a fixed supply of 90 million OAK tokens. 80% of the total supply is reserved for ICO contributors, 16.66% is reserved for the company (under time lock for up to 2 years), and 3.33% is reserved for bounties and community rewards. The OAK token will also have token growth and stability mechanisms. These tools are designed to support OAK prices. The WP is actually well written and does a good job in transmitting the main concept and there is a lot of background information to provide a backdrop to the reasoning behind this project. There are also shorter versions - “OnePager” and “Technical Paper” (19 pages) documents on the website, essentially explaining the problem and the solution proposed by Acorn Collective platform. It is worth noting that there are 135 registered project founders who are already waiting to be crowdfunded on the platform. The team behind Acorn was formed in Q3-Q4 2017. The WP lists a core team and advisors of 22 persons with finance, technical, marketing and commercial expertise. The project is backed by the community in the Telegram chat (more than 2,300 participants), Twitter (around 7000 followers), Facebook (more than 11000 followers). There are also threads in the Bitcointalk forum. Overall, it’s a good idea, nice vision and I hope that the project with this experienced team will be successful. Acorn’s ICO is underway until March 2018.

Agree

6 people agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 31 Jan 2018

Hi Toomas

Wow! Thanks so much for a really thorough workthrough of the idea and the background. Also of course for your kind support. Obviously we wholeheartedly agree with the business case summary, too - we think crowdfunding can change the way people access finance and open opportunities in every country - we just need to make it a little cheaper to do and a little more accessible.

It's so important to us that people understand what we're trying to do, not just how we're trying to do it; all of us really appreciate the amount of information you've given potential supporters, and of course your own supporting comments.

This is a Solid management team with a proven track record of success in the financial and technology space. While I believe it is a worthy project, with so many new ICOs hitting the market we must ask ourselves, is this really a project for the blockchain? The main premise is that they will make crowdfunding free. However is this a real problem? Especially in light of the fact that they are essentially raising free money through donations. Current web based platform competitors like Kickstarter only charge between 3-5%. This is about the same amount that someone would pay to convert fiat currency into cryptocurrency if they needed to move money over to support their projects. In addition, with them providing more access to groups to raise money, there is the concern that you will have to few altcoins chasing to many projects and many projects will struggle to get funded and you will have a small few that will be successful. That said, It will be very interesting to follow this and see if the team is able to pull this off.

Agree

6 people agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 7 Feb 2018

Hi Conston

Thanks very much for the review! Your comment if I have it right about too few coins chasing too many project is an interesting one - we would expect the overall market cap for OAK tokens to go up as demand increases. As the projects have a dollar target that is converted to OAK, the market cap is unlikely to be exceeded by the total project requirement. We are not a place to raise ICOs, just traditional businesses.

With the fees issue, it's certainly important, but it isn't the main point, which is making crowdfunding available in more countries with better business support and in a way that encourages community businesses as much as it does larger raises. I think sometimes we don't make this point enough.

Thanks again for the review, and for the time getting to know our project, we really appreciate it.

A strong team with diverse team members bringing experience from a lot of different areas including medicine and hospitality. I love the idea of opening up crowdfunding to a much greater audience - especially in developing countries. And I like the idea of eradicating the traditional crowdfunding fees - just cos people donate does not mean the project can afford to lose 5% of income plus the charges. I wish this project very well!

Solid team I believe. Still not sure about how to determine if a project is not acceptable or legit. Wish you all the success.

Agree

1 person agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 31 Jan 2018

Hi Ovidiu, Thanks very much for the review - there seem to be quite a few questions about project validity, and it's something we've done some work internally to map out more fully. We're going to be adding an appendix to the whitepaper with some more details shortly.

- The platform is not ready yet
- White paper clams that service will provide "free and open to any legal project in any country" which is deceiving in my opinion as every country has absolutely different laws regarding crowdfunding and investments. It's simply impossible to make it work in every country;
- In my opinion, the CEO is not experienced enough for large-scale international project like this. Founder has LinkedIn profile with only 2 job places: Resident of the Hospital (from 2014) and Acorn Collective since June 2017. Quote from CEO profile: "Having launched web businesses and run successful digital marketing campaigns for a decade, Moritz believes technology brings business within reach of everyone, everywhere" - it's unclear what businesses he has previously run;
- The rest of the team and advisory board look solid.
- Product is not unique, provided service is moderately competitive. The service could be easily replicated by competitors. At the same time platform tries to solve serious market problems and has its demand
- In compare with similar projects, Acorn Collective token economics is not so attractive: it has significant bonus disproportion between late and early token buyers.
- Weak marketing video

Agree

1 person agree

Ed LobbettICO team member replied on 7 Feb 2018

Hi Vladyslav, Thanks very much for the review and your comments. Obviously we don't agree with some of the points above, and we're probably too far apart to go through them point by point here, but we very much appreciate the fair overall scores given your specific concerns as well as the time you've taken to get to know the project and give your thoughts.

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